LG expects smartphone business to pick up in Q4

LG's smartphone business may be on the slide of late, but the company expects things to pick up in the last quarter of 2015.

Or at least that's what one LG senior executive said at the launch of the new V10 smartphone, Reuters reports.

The exec stated that he expects improvements in sales numbers in Q4 due to the launch of new hardware such as the V10. That's a premium phone of course, but the unnamed source said fresh mid-range and budget handsets would also boost market share.

Unsurprisingly, the executive refused to be drawn in terms of naming any predicted sales numbers, and it's a pretty vague sentiment overall.

The V10 leverages a somewhat novel idea in that the handset has a secondary 2.1in screen that runs along the top above the main display, and can be used to show notifications and the like, much like the edge of the screen is used with Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge.

In its fiscal results published at the end of July, LG revealed that both its smartphone and TV businesses had underperformed, with the company’s operating profit falling by a nasty 60 per cent compared to the previous year.

The firm has also slid down the smartphone vendor rankings quite considerably in recent times, as Chinese firms like Xiaomi and Huawei make major progress.